Vero sat down in the empty chair beside them. “I started an LLC in your name, opened an account, and used it to pay off your bills.” She tore off a mouthful of garlic bread. “You’re welcome,” she said around her food.
Appetite gone, I sank heavily into my chair. “All of them?”
Vero speared her fork into her spaghetti, as if the answer should have been obvious.
“Don’t you think that’s going to look a little bit suspicious? How am I supposed to explain that to Steven when he asks me where the money came from?” Delia’s eyes lifted from her plate at the sound of her father’s name, and I let my argument drop.
“It’s a new account. And it’s your company. His name isn’t on it.” Vero shrugged as she poured herself a glass of wine. “By the time he realizes the bills have been paid, your book will be done.”
“What book?”
“The one you’ve been working on at night.” She took a long sip. “It’s good, by the way.”
“What do you mean, it’s good? How could you possibly know it’s good?”
“And who’s Julian Baker?” She waggled an eyebrow.
“Were you snooping on my computer?”
“You left your browser open on his Instagram page.” She smirked at me over the rim of her glass. “He’s hot.”
“Who’s hot?” Delia asked.
“No one.” I glared at Vero as I shook a mountain of parmesan onto my plate and slammed down the can. The muted TV flickered in the living room, set to the local news station. Vero’s eyes darted to the ticker as she ate. “He’s just a friend,” I muttered into my plate.
“A little young, isn’t he?” Vero asked.
I stabbed at my pasta. “I’m thirty-one. It’s not like I’ve got one foot in the grave.”
“Last I saw, you had two.”
I kicked her under the table.
“How about Andrei Borovkov? What’s his story?”
I stopped chewing. I hadn’t mentioned anything to Vero about Patricia’s rich friend or the seventy-five-thousand-dollar promissory note I’d tucked in my desk drawer. “How do you know about that?”
Vero dropped her garlic bread, her wide eyes focused on the TV behind me. Her chair screeched as she lunged to the counter for the remote and turned up the sound. My stomach took a nosedive when I turned and saw the familiar faces on the screen.
According to police, an Arlington husband and wife have gone missing in two separate incidents, causing investigators to consider the likelihood of foul play. Patricia Mickler contacted her local sheriff’s office at approximately seven o’clock Wednesday night to report her husband, Harris Mickler, missing, saying she hadn’t heard from him since he’d left work the night before. But when police arrived at her home to take her statement, Mrs. Mickler didn’t answer the door. Police say they grew concerned after they made several attempts to reach her by phone, and more than one unanswered visit to her home. Tonight, police are launching an investigation into the couple’s whereabouts.
The camera cut away to the Micklers’ street, where neighbors all seemed to be saying the same thing. No, they hadn’t noticed anything strange. No, the Micklers were perfectly ordinary, a quiet couple, no children or pets. They both worked long hours at respectable jobs and had never caused any trouble.
Vero was still gripping my arm when the news anchor cut to a commercial break.
“Mommy, can I be excused?” Delia pushed her half-eaten bowl away, a deep wrinkle in her nose.
“Yeah, sweetie,” I said in a hollow voice. “Go wash your hands. You can play in your room.”
As soon as Delia was up the stairs, Vero turned to me. “What do we do?”
This was not a plot twist I had planned on. “We are not going to panic,” I insisted. Who was I kidding? We were definitely panicking.
“Where the hell is she?”
“Patricia? She probably got scared and left town.”
“It makes her look guilty!” Zach’s sauce-covered face snapped up at her outburst. His eyes ping-ponged between us and Vero lowered her voice. “If the police find her, she could confess everything.” She swiped my cell phone from the counter and held it out to me. “Call her and tell her she’s making a mistake. She needs to come back.”
“I’ve called her a dozen times. She wouldn’t answer my calls, so I went to her house—”
“Are you crazy?”
“No one saw me.” At least, I hoped not. I swallowed hard, remembering the knife protruding from Patricia’s back door. “But … while I was there, two men showed up.”
“What men?”
“I don’t know. But I think they might have been the men Patricia warned me about. They left a note. I think they might have been Harris’s clients. I think he was stealing from them. When I opened his mail, I found a bank statement—”
“You opened his mail? Your fingerprints are probably all over the envelope!”
I reached inside my pocket and put the bank statement on the table. “It’s fine. I took it with me.”
Vero choked. She snatched it off the table and opened it, her eyes narrowing as they skimmed the statement. “Twelve deposits, all on the first of the month, for the same amount. You think he was embezzling from his clients?”
I nodded. “It gets worse. Turn the page.” Vero flipped to the balance sheet, her mouth forming an oh around the big fat zero at the bottom. “The note said Patricia had twenty-four hours to return what she’d taken.”
“You think these men were the ones who killed Harris?”
“They definitely had a motive. They want their money back. And we have fifty thousand of it.”
Vero hugged my phone as she paced the kitchen. “Patricia paid us in cash. If these men did follow you home from the bar, they could just assume you were on a date and he’d had too much to drink. They’d have no way of knowing Patricia hired you. With a half million dollars, she could run anywhere. If they don’t find Patricia, they won’t find out about us, right?”
“Right.”
Zach fussed in his high chair. I wiped pasta sauce from his face, plucked him from his seat, and set him down to toddle after his sister.
Vero fell into her chair. She pushed her plate to the middle of the table, looking at it as if she might be sick. “What if the police find Patricia before we do?”
“The only thing she knows about me is my number. She doesn’t know my name or where I live. I doubt she could even identify me in a lineup.” I’d been wearing a wig and high heels and plenty of makeup. Hopefully it was enough. “Besides, I have you for an alibi,” I said, dropping into the chair beside her.
“I thought I was an accomplice.”
“Not if they can’t prove it. As far as anyone else is concerned, I was here at home with you the night Harris Mickler went missing. I called my sister from the house phone in the kitchen. And Georgia saw us together when we picked up the kids. All we have to do is get rid of any evidence that could lead the police back to us.”
Vero looked down at my phone. She dropped it on the table in front of me as if it were crawling with lice.
“Relax. It’s a prepaid cell. Verizon shut off my account last month when I was late on my bill. I bought this one at the pharmacy.”
“Can’t the police find a record of the payment?”
“My credit cards were all maxed out. I paid in cash.” I rested my elbows on the table, digging the heels of my hands into my eyes. “There’s nothing tying the phone to me.”
“Don’t you watch Law and Order? They can trace those things!”
“Only to the nearest tower it pings.”
“How close is that?”
“I don’t know … a few miles maybe?”
“Too close for me.” Vero rose from her seat. My head snapped up as she threw my phone down on the cutting board. She grabbed a meat tenderizer from the utensil drawer and raised the metal mallet behind her head.
“Wait!” I snatched my phone before she could smash it. Turning my
back on her, I thumbed through my contacts. Vero stood on her tiptoes, peeking over my shoulder as I copied Julian’s number onto a sticky pad.
“Just a friend, huh?”
“He’s a lawyer,” I said, tucking the sticky note in my pocket. “His number might come in handy.”
“He’s too young to be a lawyer.”
“He’s a public defender,” I quipped. “Or at least, he will be. Someday. When he graduates.”
“Nu-uh.” Vero nixed that idea with big exaggerated sweeps of her head. “If we get caught, we’re not hiring some Abercrombie underwear model to keep us out of prison. I want an old white dude with cuff links and a Rolex. Like your ex’s attorney.”
“My ex’s attorney is not old. He’s only three years older than me. And he charges two hundred dollars per hour.”
“If we kill Andrei Borovkov, we could afford that.”
I gave her a withering look.
“Where’d you meet him anyway?”
“Borovkov?”
“No,” she said, yanking away my phone. “Julian Baker.”
She drummed her nails against the counter, waiting for an answer.
“He was bartending,” I confessed, “the night I kidnapped Harris from The Lush.”
“He’s the bartender? The one from your story? Have you lost your mind!” she hissed, gesticulating wildly. “You can’t keep his phone number. What if he turns you in?”
“He doesn’t even know who I am! I was wearing a blond wig and I gave him a fake name . He thinks I’m a real estate agent named Theresa.”
The kitchen fell silent. Vero’s mouth fell open and she blinked at me. A laugh started deep in her throat, building into a cackle until it exploded out of her. I started laughing, too. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
She shook her head as she crossed the kitchen and filled both of our wineglasses. She handed me mine, watching me with a level of amusement she usually reserved for my children as she sipped. “You like him, don’t you?”
I leaned against the counter beside her, mostly so I wouldn’t have to look her in the eyes. I took a long swig, pretty sure the answer was obvious.
Vero drained her glass. She set it down and put an arm around my shoulder. “You know you can’t call him, right? If he figures out who you are, he could blow your alibi to pieces. You said it yourself. We have to get rid of anything that could tie us back to the Micklers.” I knew she was right. And yet, I couldn’t make myself get rid of his number. “You think we should kill him, just to be sure?”
“No!” I turned to gape at her. “We didn’t kill anyone! And we’re not going to kill anyone! Not Andrei Borovkov. And definitely not Julian. This is it. End of story.”
Vero laughed, her cheeks flushed from the wine. “Relax, I was only kidding!”
I popped open the phone and threw the SIM card in the garbage disposal. Water poured from the tap, and Vero’s laughter died as I flipped the wall switch. We both started at the sudden grind of metal on metal. The sound trailed down my spine, dragging a shiver from me as our last tie to Patricia Mickler rattled down the drain.
CHAPTER 19
I’d learned two very important lessons having a sister for a cop. One, you can find almost anyone on the internet. And two, you’re more likely to get caught committing crimes in your own home than in plain sight.
Which was why I was committing mine in my local public library.
The kids were with Steven for the weekend, and Vero was home studying for her midterm accounting exams. I hadn’t exactly been lying when I’d told her I was going to the library to do research for the book. How else was I going to know what happened in the next chapter of the mystery surrounding the Micklers if I couldn’t figure out where Patricia went?
I claimed a seat at the last workstation in the back of the room and opened a browser. Then I typed in Patricia’s name, scouring social media sites and white pages for any information I could find about her: neighborhoods where she used to live, people she was close with, places she frequented … In less than an hour I was yawning, and not one step closer to finding her. Patricia Mickler’s life made mine look glamorous by comparison. With the exception of her office, the animal shelter where she volunteered, and the weekly Pilates class she’d mentioned, it seemed she rarely left the house. Apparently, she had even fewer friends than I did.
Patricia’s online profile featured more animals than people, the only exception being a photo of some shelter volunteers, taken at an adoption event the month prior. Patricia, clearly the oldest of the group, cuddled a white-faced mutt with a patch of black fur covering one eye. The caption said the dog’s name was Pirate, and Aaron—the young, curly-haired volunteer beside her—held the dog’s littermate, Molly.
I clicked over to her friends list, searching for the faces of the volunteers in the photo, but didn’t find any matches. Patricia didn’t appear to connect with them beyond the time she spent at the shelter. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised; the other volunteers were all young, probably in college, and Patricia, betrayed by the smile lines and shadows around her eyes, stuck out from the fresh-faced group like a sore thumb. Maybe this was the reason she chose to compartmentalize that part of her life. Still, she looked younger in the photo than the weary, defeated woman I’d met in the Panera. Happier and more at ease somehow. As if this place were her home, and these animals were her family.
According to public records, Patricia had been an only child and her parents were deceased. From her social media pages, I knew she and Harris had met in college at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown, which meant she’d lived within a four-mile radius of the DC beltway her entire life. I couldn’t see her cashing out and leaving town to start over someplace else alone. She seemed far too timid for a bold move like that. Maybe she was just confused and scared, holed up in a hotel room, too terrified to face what she’d done. Or too afraid of the men Harris had been tangled up with.
Wherever she was, if she didn’t come out of hiding soon, the police were going to find her. And they were going to ask her questions. And those questions would inevitably lead them to me. She’d paid me for a job. And I’d told her I had done it. As far as the police were concerned, it would seem like an open-and-shut case. My only hope was to find her first and explain to her what had happened. That I hadn’t been the one to kill her husband. Maybe, together, we could find a way to prove those other two men were guilty.
I pushed back my chair and extended my sore legs. Almost four days had passed since we’d buried Harris, but every muscle I’d used to dig his grave still felt like it was punishing me. My back groaned as I reached above my head. There had to be someone Patricia trusted enough to confide in. Someone who might know where to find her.
My arms froze midstretch.
Pilates.
The note Patricia had slid across the table had come from a woman she knew from her weekly Pilates class—Andrei Borovkov’s wife. Patricia had said they were only acquaintances, but that had clearly been a lie. If Patricia felt close enough to this woman to refer her to a contract killer, it was possible she trusted Mrs. Borovkov with other sensitive information about her life … like where she’d planned to go after paying me to murder her husband.
I slid my chair back toward the computer, preparing for the usual barrage of social media hits as I searched for Andrei Borovkov’s wife. But the first hit—and almost every hit after—was the headline of a news article about a recent triple homicide.
I remembered Georgia talking about that crime scene weeks ago; three local businessmen had been found with their throats slashed in a warehouse in Herndon. According to the headlines on my screen, the case had resulted in a mistrial.
Every article I scrolled through featured the same photo—two men ducking into a limo at the bottom of the courthouse steps. One was formidable-looking, with a bald head and hooded eyes. The other was polished and well-dressed, probably his attorney. It was taken from the same video cli
p I’d seen on the TV in Georgia’s apartment.
I zoomed in on the image, leaning closer to see.
My stomach dropped.
These were the same men who’d been driving the Lincoln Town Car. The same men who’d jammed the knife in Patricia’s back door.
That’s why Andrei’s name had felt so familiar when I’d read it on his wife’s note. Because I’d heard it before. On the news. It had been playing in the background at Georgia’s house when I’d picked up my kids the night we’d buried Harris.
Andrei Borovkov wasn’t just any problem husband. He was the murder suspect OCN had failed to convict. The one Georgia’s friends had been so upset about. He’d been acquitted that morning, the same day Harris Mickler was killed.
According to the article, Irina Borovkov’s husband worked as a bodyguard for a wealthy businessman named Feliks Zhirov—a man with known ties to the Russian mob.
I slapped a hand over my mouth to stifle a gasp.
You work for Feliks?
That’s what Harris had asked me in the bar, when I’d casually suggested we belonged to the same vague financial group. He’d looked sick when he said it, and I’d assumed it was because of the drugs. Patricia didn’t just know Irina Borovkov from Pilates. Their husbands were in business together—mafia business.
Harris had been stealing from the mob.
I cleared the search from the screen with shaking hands, afraid someone might see it. Then I cleared my entire search history, unsteady when I shot to my feet. Andrei Borovkov wasn’t just a bodyguard. Bodyguards protected people. They didn’t get arrested for slashing up businessmen in warehouses. They didn’t leave death threats on people’s back doors when they thought someone had stolen their boss’s money.
I’d been hired to kill an enforcer for the Russian mob.
Suddenly, I wasn’t sure which was scarier—the possibility that I’d be caught by the police for a murder I didn’t commit, or the likelihood I’d be murdered by Andrei Borovkov once he learned what his wife had done.
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